China: A nuclear nonproliferation deadbeat

It’s gone unnoticed, but the Biden and Trump administrations agree on something important: By refusing to join arms control talks, China is flouting the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), a nuclear arms control cornerstone. And they aren’t the only ones saying so. Japan’s prime minister, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) are too. 

Sound weird? It is. But so is Beijing’s nuclear behavior. Last year, U.S. commercial imagery satellites spotted breakneck work on 350 Chinese missile silos. Each could hold a three-to-10 warheaded missile. That foreshadows 1,050 to 3,500 Chinese intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) warheads. By contrast, the United States has 400 silos with missiles carrying only one warhead each. 

More recently, evidence emerged that China is significantly expanding its nuclear test facilities at Lop Nur. Combined with Beijing’s construction of two “peaceful” breeder reactors (which produce super-weapons grade plutonium, which makes creating smaller, lighter warheads for missile delivery much easier) and two reprocessing plants (which extract plutonium from spent reactor fuel), and China is already off the starting blocks to a nuclear arms race.  

In autumn 2020, President Trump’s Pentagon estimated China had a nuclear arsenal in the “low 200s,” poised to “at least” double by 2030. A year later, Biden’s Pentagon upped this projection: China will have “at least 1,000” warheads by 2030. 

Trump officials, having sounded alarms about China’s nuclear weapons efforts in 2020, in 2021 publicly demanded China live up to its NPT Article VI obligation to “to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date.” They also briefed America’s key allies and asked China to join nuclear arms negotiations with Washington and Moscow. China refused, asserting that it doesn’t have enough weapons to justify negotiating about. 

With Biden’s election, some, including us, feared Washington’s spotlight on China’s nuclear weapons fixations would dim. The State Department, in its annual arms control compliance report, said nothing about China’s noncompliance with Article VI. The administration was also reticent toward China’s nuclear test-related activities. In short, it looked like Biden would turn a blind eye to China’s nuclear misbehavior. 

We were wrong. President Biden made good use of the otherwise faltering NPT Review Conference this summer to call on China to embrace its “responsibility as an NPT nuclear weapons state and a member of the P5 to engage in talks that will reduce the risk of [nuclear] miscalculation and address destabilizing military dynamics.”

He also criticized Beijing for resisting “substantive engagement on arms control and nuclear non-proliferation.” Thus, Biden effectively joined Trump officials who had taken China to task in 2020 and 2021. 

But China continues to insist there’s no ground to negotiate until the United States reduces its arsenal. This is an evasion. From 1968, when the NPT entered into force, to 2020, the United States reduced its nuclear arsenal by nearly 90 percent. Moreover, Article VI requires nuclear-armed states to negotiate right away, not stall until conditions suit one negotiating party best. 

What, then, is to be done? First, almost no one in Congress has objected to China’s Article VI noncompliance. A hearing on the latest NPT Review Conference could help. 

Second, Washington has yet to spell out what nuclear arms control initiatives China and others should consider. An easy candidate would be nuclear hotlines. Washington already has one with Moscow. The UK and France would quickly agree to create one. China should too. 

Yet another step would be to clarify the norm against nuclear tests. The NPT nuclear weapons states have agreed not to conduct nuclear tests — but they disagree on what a nuclear test is. Negotiating a definition would be valuable. 

China also could be encouraged to adhere to its 1997 voluntary agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to file annual reports on its civilian plutonium holdings, production and plans. Beijing has not reported since 2017. 

Other initiatives are possible but only if the surprising, and welcome, consensus between the Trump and Biden administrations on China and the NPT continues and grows. 

Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, served as deputy for nonproliferation in the Defense Department and is author of “Underestimated: Our Not So Peaceful Nuclear Future” (2019). Thomas D. Grant, a senior fellow at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law at the University of Cambridge and a visiting fellow of the National Security Institute at George Mason University, served as senior adviser for strategic planning in the State Department Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation during the Trump administration.